She’s moving to Vancouver from Lafayette College in Pensylvania, where she’s taught English since 2004. She’s also taught at the Warren Wilson MFA program in North Carolina, at the New York State Summer Writers’ Institute and was the Mordecai Richler writer-in-residence at McGill University during the 2016-17 academic year.

“I am thrilled to welcome Alix to UBC as the next chair of the creative writing program and am confident the program will thrive under her leadership. Ohlin’s international reputation as a novelist and short story writer and her passion for mentoring other writers make her an asset to the program and writing community,“ Kathryn Harrison, acting dean, faculty of arts at UBC said in a media release.

Ohlin’s 2012 novel Inside was named a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, Amazon.ca, and iTunes Canada, and a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller and Rogers Writers’ Trust prizes. Her first novel, The Missing Person, was published in 2005. She’s also published two collections of short stories.

A graduate of Harvard, she counts fiction, screenwriting and environmental writing as her main specialties. She also holds a master’s in fine arts from the University of Texas at Austin

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to join a program with such talented faculty and students. I look forward to working with the entire literary community there and building on the program’s rich history,” Ohlin said in the statement..

There are 5,500 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate courses as part of UBC’s creative writing program, which was founded in 1965. “A number of award-winning screenwriters, playwrights, novelists, poets and non-fiction writers” have come through the program, the university says.

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